In ‘Ellis,’ immigrants find common ground
President Trump may not yet have his wall, but his rhetoric has erected barriers — making it nearly impossible to calmly discuss U.S. immigration policy.
Worse, the more we shout at each other, the harder it becomes to hear the voices of the immigrants who stand to lose most.
In “Ellis,” a 60-minute piece devised by Kelly Coffey and Don Russell, Cooperative Performance tries to talk past such divisions, through stories featuring immigrants to America from all over the world.
Presented in collaboration with Alejandra Gonzalez and Alverno College, it opened over the weekend under Coffey’s direction.
A Milwaukee-based actor attending Alverno, Gonzalez is among the 700,000 young and undocumented immigrants who’ve been temporarily shielded from deportation.
She’s also among scores of such young people profiled in a remarkable New York Times feature chronicling why they’re here and want to stay. But when Gonzalez takes the stage early in “Ellis,” the story she tells is seemingly as American as apple pie: what it’s like to fall in love and share secrets.
Her secret happens to be her undocumented status, but the tone is set for the night to come.
By and large, these stories won’t be about what makes us different. They’ll instead focus on all we share.
Hence Kosovan refugee Zgjim Baraliu — the only other performer embodying his own story — moves from a harrowing account of his family’s flight to a universal story about choosing between parental expectations (doctor, lawyer) and one’s own dreams (actor, artist).
In a charming, slightly melancholy story by Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar (performed by Raja Zafar), an immigrant’s latent fear of losing identity and self is presented as a craving for American junk food.
A third story — written by Elizabeth and Molly Watson and performed by Sandra Hollander and Sammi Kaufman — finds humor in the unenlightened questions frequently asked of white parents adopting children of color.
Some narratives are darker; in one anonymously submitted story presented by Kait Muehlhans, an undocumented woman fails to report being raped, for fear that she’ll then be deported.
And all of these stories are flecked with sadness; each of them channels the out-of-body experience of every exile, forever divided from part of one’s self.
There’s nothing fancy in these stories’ delivery or presentation, despite a few unexceptional choreographic embellishments; simply staged, this is the least avowedly theatrical piece Cooperative Performance has ever done.
That homespun approach is the point.
Not all our ancestors entered through an island called Ellis; those making the harrowing Middle Passage didn’t choose to come at all.
But most of our ancestors started elsewhere; most of us will relate to at least some of the stories told here. All worth remembering, in every current debate involving fictive characters named us and them.